COOP

COOP

The National Archives participate in Community as Opportunity (CO:OP) project comprising 17 European archives and universities. The project will be implemented during 2015–2018.

Support for digitising private materials

The project has two key areas. The first goal is to promote the digitisation, sharing and long-term storage of archive materials possessed by private individuals.

To this purpose, the National Archives have acquired mobile digitisation stations, which interested parties can borrow. The digital files will be saved on a Topotheque platform established by project and, when needed, on a storage device of the participating party. In Topotheque, the files are saved in a map base on which everyone interested can see the objects located in any given area. All objects placed in Topotheques get a CC-BY 4.0 license, in other words, the materials will be freely available for use for all just as long the users mention the source in the manner desired by the material donor.

Digital collections sought

The aim is to organise five digitisation events in 2016, for each of which 50 participants are expected in accordance with the project policy, and each of them are expected to present at least 40 objects, for example old photographs, to be digitised.

If you are willing to bring your organisation (e.g. local heritage association) to participate in the project, please contact the contact person mentioned below. Participation is free for organisations, but they must convene the participants and suggest a suitable location for the event; if the rent for the location is reasonable, it will be paid from project funds

If successful, the project will solve many problems related to the digitisation and presentation: high-quality digitisation will be implemented with equipment acquired for the project; licensing issues are clear, the materials will be available for everyone for studying at the local Topotheque; long-term storage will be realised by transferring the materials to the Europeana portal – the Hungarian management of the project is currently in talks about this with Europeana.

New archive experiences for more people

The other key part of the project is to study young people’s archive experiences and to learn from them. For this purpose, we are looking for a school class in Helsinki or some provincial archive town (Hämeenlinna, Joensuu, Jyväskylä, Mikkeli, Oulu, Turku, Vaasa) that would visit the archive and record the visit with a video camera provided for them. At the same time, the group would get basic information about archive range and the use of materials.

Enrol your school class

School groups wanting to visit the archives can enrol with development manager Tomi Ahoranta. The archive visits will start in 2017.